Berry: Guarding the spark of conscience

“Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience.” – George Washington.

What are people of faith and good conscience to do when the government demands that they forfeit their consciences to its decrees?

On Jan. 20, 2012, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that it was refusing to rescind a rule that had been issued as part of Obamacare. The rule requires nearly all health insurance plans to include birth control, including contraception, abortion and sterilization.

Combined with Obamacare’s mandate that all Americans shall purchase health insurance, the rule has the effect of forcing Catholics to participate in what their faith defines as unconscionable and immoral. Individually, they must purchase coverage for these practices, and Catholic employers must include them in offered coverage, or offer none at all. Refusal to purchase or provide said coverage is punished by fines, with the monies being used to fund the practices.

Remember Speaker Pelosi saying that Obamacare had to be passed so we could see what’s in it? This attack on the basic morals of millions of Americans by a President to whom religious freedom is evidently irrelevant is part – and only part – of what’s in it.

When the rule was first announced last year, American bishops were quick to denounce it, and they were joined by lay Catholics who take their faith seriously enough to object to government intrusion upon it. But to no avail; their protests were mocked and rejected.

President Obama flippantly told a Democrat audience in October, “Darn tootin’” that insurers would be forced to provide abortion and sterilization coverage. The phrase elicited laughter from the crowd. But, Mr. President, this is what tens of millions of deeply offended, devout Americans who will be voting in November look like when we’re not laughing.

Ms. Pelosi dismissed the bishops as “lobbyists.” As unseemly as it is to make no distinction between matters of conscience and trying to influence legislation for monetary gain, this is not the first time she has made this comparison. Last May, when it suited her purposes to do so, Pelosi – who claims to be Catholic – asked the bishops to lobby their congregations for her immigration agenda.

More recently, Ms. Pelosi promised to “stand with my fellow Catholics” in support of what she called a “very courageous decision” to attack key elements of her faith. All right, then: What “fellow Catholics?”

A National Catholic Reporter survey taken last October shows that 85% of American Catholics are moderately or highly committed to their faith. While the criteria for these levels of commitment are not provided, are we to believe that a large percentage of American Catholics agree with mocking their bishops for defending a basic tenet of their faith from encroaching tyranny? With the government forcing them into wholesale violations of conscience?

Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) has been an ardent supporter of Obamacare. She has also opposed much abortion legislation, and gets high marks from the Americans United for Separation of Church and State, so the rule puts her in an especially awkward position.

As one of northwest Ohio’s most prominent Catholics, her commitment to Obamacare now has her publicly supporting what is anathema to her faith, as well as a gross violation of her position on church and state. Ms. Kaptur recently – and only recently, after the lid blew off the controversy – told The Toledo Blade that she wants women’s health care provided for without denying religious conscience, but with a dig at Catholic employers for not wanting to provide birth control coverage.

Regardless of such posturing by politicians, lay Catholics have to face facts. Catholics voted for Obama by a 54%-45% margin in 2008. Do that many Catholics so comprehensively reject their church’s teachings about the sanctity of life as to vote for a candidate who is utterly committed to forcing abortion upon those who reject it as immoral?

On Jan. 29, Catholic priests across America read a letter from their bishops about the Obamacare ruling to their congregations. In my parish, many parishioners were seen squirming uncomfortably in their seats during the reading. I can only hope that their discomfort came from realizing how far we have had to fall in order for a President to become openly hostile to the religious freedom of so many Americans.

Moreover, anyone of good faith should be made profoundly uncomfortable by these developments. For now, the government is targeting Catholics. If this blatant discrimination against one faith’s morals and practices is allowed to stand, what is next? How long before your beliefs are criminalized? What other rights should they take away before your conscience demands that you take a stand?